New Papers

I have uploaded a new version of my presentism paper and two new papers to my website:

Presentism, Primitivism and The Problem of Cross-Temporal Relations: Lessons from Hoslistic Ersatzism and Dynamic Semantics

Intellectual Flourishing as the Fundamental Epistemic Norm

Perceptual Reports

Presentism and Cross-Temporal Relations

I just finished a first draft of a new paper on presentism and cross-temporal relations. If you have any comments, feel free to email them to me at brogaardb@gmail.com

New Consciousness Paper

I have made my paper for the Syracuse SPAWN conference temporarily available here. I am sure it will undergo drastic changes after the conference.

FoodTongue: Interview with Alan Huang

Alan Huang is a three- (soon to be four-) time alum of the Canada/USA Mathcamp, where the language FoodTongue started about five or six years ago. Alan learned FoodTongue just prior to his first Mathcamp, and he helped create the most recent dictionary, which is more or less all written in FoodTongue.

Brit: Hi Alan! In a sentence or two, what is FoodTongue?

Alan: Depending on the speaker, it's either a bold experiment in language design or a creative specimen of Mathcamp randomness (or an unnaturally long-lived bad idea, for certain non-speakers).

Brit: Can you tell us a bit more about the entries in the lexicon of FoodTongue? Is there a purely conventional connection between the symbols of the language and the entities referred to? Or is there a system or pattern which you follow when new words are introduced? Or is there an even closer connection between the symbols of the language and the entities referred to than that?

Alan: There's no general rule by which words are related to their meanings. Speakers are free to create any new words they need to express ideas, and the methods by which foods have been chosen include sound in English or other languages (lobster), properties of the food (popsicle), specific references (pie), related words (ketchup/mustard), themes (names of games), and randomness (Ice Cream).

Many words are thus easier to remember than if meanings were attached to random food names. Occasionally conflicts arise, but as FoodTongue evolves, ambiguous, hard-to-remember, and uncommon words tend to be replaced. The system also works well without a central authority -- the dictionary may be the closest FoodTongue has to one, but it's designed as a wiki so that it can respond to changes in the language, as opposed to instigating them.

Brit: What is the syntax like? Is the syntax that of English? Or does it have its own syntax? The phonology obviously must be that of English.

Alan: First of all, there's no inflection in FoodTongue, since there aren't many endings to add on to English nouns. (The obvious choice is to pluralize, but that has not been used yet. There has been discussion on grouping related foods; for example, if grape is a verb, raisin could be the future tense. But that was deemed infeasible.) So FoodTongue usually follows normal English word order (subject - verb - object, preposition - noun, etc.), and everything else (such as tense, number, and person) is done with separate words. However, grammar is still quite free-form as long as it's understandable, and speakers may have different styles based on preference or other languages they know. For example, a sentence that literally means "want have" would be understood as "I want to have it". A special case is music and poetry (of which there do exist FoodTongue examples). Since FoodTongue words tend to have more syllables compared to English translations, words are often omitted or moved to fit the meter.

Brit: Can you ascribe propositional attitudes to others in FoodTongue? You mentioned "want"-reports above. What about other attitude ascriptions? For example, can you say "I know that p", "I believe that p", "I hope that p", "I love that p", etc? More generally: is there a way of expressing tense and modality in the language? Can you talk about what once were the case but is no longer? Can you talk about what will be the case? Can you talk about what is merely physically, metaphysically or logically possible? Can you talk about what is logically impossible? If so, how do you do that?

Alan: All such constructions are usually just implemented with subordinate clauses, e.g. "I want that you be here". There are words for verbs like "think", "know", "love" and helpers like "should", "can", "must", which can be used with such clauses (or independently). Essentially everything else that's possible (and I don't know if some modals are in concise ways) is done explicitly, with words like "maybe" and "in the past" / "now" / "in the future". For example, "it PAST be, but NOW not" means "it was once the case, but no longer", and "not can be that..." means "it is impossible that".

Brit: Do you have ways of expressing indicative conditionals (e.g., "if John is home, then I will pay him a visit"), subjunctive conditionals (e.g. "if I had been a Mathcamper, I would have known FoodTongue"), conditional probabilities (e.g. "the probability that it will rain given how clowdy it is is 0.8"), etc?

Alan: There is no distinction between indicative and subjunctive conditionals; the difference is determined through knowledge and context. Probabilities are expressed by modifying "maybe", e.g. "if he NOW not be here, he big-maybe small-FUTURE be" would be understood as "if he is not here now, he will probably be here soon", but whether he is here now (and whether the speaker knows) is unstated.

Brit: Could you also say something about indexicals ("I", "now", "here"), demonstratives ("this", "that"), quantification ("there is an ...", "for all x") and anaphora (e.g., "A man entered the door. He took off his hat") Do you have a word referring directly to the speaker or the time of speech? Do you have words that refer only when accompanied by a demonstration (e.g. by an index finger or a gaze). Can you quantify over things as in "there are at least 30 people who are fluent speakers of the language"? Are there anaphors that refer to an entity already referred to, as in "The TV is in the living room. But it is broken".

Alan: There are words for "I" / "you" / "he/she" (plurals are formed by prepending "all"), "in the past" / "now" / "in the future", and "here"/ "there". Demonstratives are handled by "here" / "there" or by the word for "one", which serves generically either to specify or to refer to nonhuman objects ("one book be good; one be big and" means "this book is good; it is big also"). Humans are referred to by the pronoun "he/she". All of these words can also be specified nonverbally (e.g. a gesture in person, or a picture in a blog entry).

There is one relative pronoun ("that") and one interrogative (which can take a noun, as in "what person"). Quantifiers are expressed with "be x that y" and "all x y". When referring to mentioned entities, "one" and "he/she" may be omitted if understood. For example, "should talk he/she; be here" could mean "you should talk to her; she is here".

The word for "and" has several other meanings, including "add", "also", "so", "then", and "more". Comparisons and such use "and" (in the sense of "more") and/or an adjective or adverb followed by the relative pronoun (acting as "than"). For example, "and that 30" means "at least 30"; "and big that Dan" or "big that Dan" means "bigger than Dan". It sounds confusing as I write it, but in practice it's quite natural.

One caveat -- numbers. Usually, all numbers greater than four are lumped into "many". Thus, "at least 30 people speak FoodTongue" would simply be translated "many person talk food-tongue". When relatively small numbers must be named, as in specifying Mathcamp 06 / 07 / 08, the numbers will be added together ("four and two", etc.). There is a base-five system that uses zero through four, but it's not really in common use.

Brit: How is the language used? Is it used only in writing on certain internet sites? Or is it also spoken when you meet other speakers of the language?

Alan: FoodTongue is probably most often spoken on the Internet. Speakers often make blog entries or have IM conversations containing (or entirely in) FoodTongue. However, it may also be heard whenever speakers meet in person -- likely math and science competitions, university events, and Mathcamp itself, where it's seldom difficult to find someone speaking or teaching FoodTongue.

Brit: What was the reason for inventing the language? Was it started as a kind of experiment? There is something very secretive about the language. What is that all about?

Alan: The language started at Mathcamp 2004. I was not there, so my source is the first FoodTongue dictionary, distributed in that year. One evening, at a gathering of campers, the idea came up of trying to communicate entirely with food words. Soon the campers formed a basic vocabulary, and began teaching others. At that first meeting it was decided, as noted in the dictionary, that FoodTongue should not when possible be explained in other languages, which has remained a central principle. So it's not that the language is being kept secret, but that questions asked about it often cannot be answered.

Brit: Why have a principle to the effect that FoodTongue should not when possible be explained in other languages? Was it because you wanted the language to develop naturally?

Alan: As I said, I was not present at FoodTongue's creation, but I suspect that because it grew out of a suggestion to communicate entirely with food words, there was a desire to maintain that ideal by not bringing in other modes of verbal communication. As Waffle [Eric Wofsey] said, "The goal of Food Tongue is not to be understood. The goal is to communicate within a restricted framework." Or perhaps there is a tradition at Mathcamp to confuse people by not explaining things (but also to willingly demonstrate for those who show interest). Whatever the case, those who have learned FoodTongue since its inception have also been willing to continue upholding the principle. I think that as it's often brought up as a matter of following the spirit of the language, there's an element similar to suspension of disbelief, where speakers agree to abide by the rules or risk breaking the experience. It should also be noted that there is no restriction on discussing FoodTongue in other languages, only on explaining individual words.

Brit: So how did you manage to acquire FoodTongue prior to your first Mathcamp? Did you have a mentor?

Alan: The best way to teach FoodTongue without violating its spirit is in person, because gestures and other nonverbal communication are allowed. I was taught it before Mathcamp 2006 by a friend who had gone in 2005, and he demonstrated many of the words for me (for example, pointing at his watch to show the word for time). I should note that the *new* dictionary is written in FoodTongue -- the first dictionary, which I mentioned before, has two-way translations between English and FoodTongue. Clearly, this violated its own principle, so it was decided (I believe) that the dictionary should only be used by fluent speakers, as a reference. (The stated goal of the dictionary was to reunite some dialects that had arisen, for which breaking the principle was useful.)

Brit: What do you use the language to talk about? All sorts of topics? Math? The language itself?

Alan: FoodTongue generally doesn't have the vocabulary needed to delve deep into any field (although agglutination and calquing may produce approximations), but anything it has words for (or that words can be created for) is fair game, from talking about school to playing a card game. If anything, FoodTongue is particularly suited to Mathcamp culture; some words (grapefruit, smarties) refer to concepts specific to Mathcamp, and a few of those have become the primary means of naming those concepts (meatloaf, starfruit), at least among my friends. In practice, conversations may switch into and out of FoodTongue regardless of the subject at hand (or for gratuitous Mathcamp references).

Brit: How many people would you say master the language? Or is it hard to say? Can anyone join the forums where the language is spoken?

Alan: This is a tough question, and I doubt anyone has an accurate count. I personally know at least 30-40 people who would answer to their FoodTongue names; of those, up to a dozen are in my IM contacts and regularly converse with me in FoodTongue. But these are mostly Mathcamp alumni from 2007-2008; I know next to nothing about those from 2004-2006, and I'm also not the best-connected in my corner of Mathcamp. In theory, there's nothing preventing anyone from learning FoodTongue. However, the three main barriers are knowledge, interest, and teaching.

First, FoodTongue has probably spread little beyond Mathcamp, so many people who may be interested have never heard of it. Second, although many speakers try to teach friends the language, they are unfortunately often uninterested. Finally, as I noted, FoodTongue is best taught in person, and very difficult otherwise unless pictures are used (assuming the principle is adhered to). Most teaching thus goes on at Mathcamp, where each summer a handful of campers learn FoodTongue from alumni. This seems sufficient to keep the language alive, and indeed it shows no signs of dying just yet, but it is still limited in its reach.

Brit: It is obviously fun to learn a new language and to be able to speak a different language. But do you think that FoodTongue might also serve any practical purposes?

Alan: I have not seen any uses of FoodTongue for which it is particularly suited. That said, I think generally FoodTongue has as much practical use as any other natural language. It has sufficient vocabulary to describe everyday life concisely, especially at Mathcamp. But FoodTongue is probably spoken more for its principles and for itself than for any external purpose. Speakers enjoy being part of the community and communicating within the restrictions -- which is good, because short of aliens visiting Earth who share none of our physical features but somehow eat the same foods, I can't think of any situation in which it would uniquely useful.

Brit: Do you know of any other languages which are like FoodTongue? How does it compare to international languages like Esperanto? How does it compare to secret codes used throughout history by e.g. intelligence agencies?

Alan: So first of all, FoodTongue is certainly not an international language. It's spoken by people who already know English and much of it, from the vocabulary to word order, comes from English. The words are easy to learn because they're English food names, and the meanings are easy to remember largely because they have associations in English. (Of course, it's possible to create foreign equivalents by translating all of the food names; for example, "Pomme langue baguette-langue" is a valid sentence in French FoodTongue.)

I think the property that mapping a subset of a language (food words) into a complete language in itself sets FoodTongue apart from many languages. It may be similar to some codes, but it's not suitable for secrecy as it is -- many words are easy to figure out, and even if disguised as a grocery list it's usually obvious there's a hidden meaning. FoodTongue is probably most similar to games played by children in which they redefine words (for example, Tolkien's Animalic).

Brit: I once compared FoodTongue to so-called Lagadonian languages in which objects, properties, reletions etc. are names of themselves. Obviously, FoodTongue is not a Lagadonian language. However, I wonder whether there is any interesting similarity between FoodTongue and Lagadonian languages? Any thoughts?

Alan: As I noted before, it's possible to translate all the food words into another language, while expressing the same ideas. There may have been some dispute over the issue, but my view is that FoodTongue is theoretically independent of the words used to express it. That is, the concept of me is expressed by the concept of apple, not the English word "apple" (or the French word "pomme"), even if the concept was apple was chosen to represent the first-person pronoun because of associations of the English word "apple". It is thus possible to create a salad that's a valid FoodTongue sentence, though it may be a rather weird salad. Although the foods are abstract -- the concept of me is represented by the concept of apple, not a specific apple -- this interpretation is similar to the original Lagado, in that representations of concepts are not tied to any specific spoken, written, or physical form.

Brit: How do you predict that FoodTongue will evolve in the future?

Alan: As I understand it, after FoodTongue was invented at Mathcamp 2004, almost nobody learned it in 2005, but it became much more popular in 2006. In the first dictionary there are many words that have fallen out of use (some of which have been redefined), and there are many words that I use for which it includes no equivalent. Unlike with natural languages, once campers leave the population (graduate from Mathcamp), they maintain contact with friends from camp. A possible scenario is that every few years the FoodTongue spoken at Mathcamp will have shifted, and the alumni from those years as they move on will still speak it as they did as campers. So while the language continues to evolve at camp, multiple age-separated groups of speakers will form, still mutually intelligible but with visible differences in vocabulary and perhaps philosophy. I don't know how likely this is, though.

Brit: Do you have any advice to people interested in learning the language?

Alan: The best advice to people interested in FoodTongue is to contact someone who knows it. The wiki is designed so that it's possible to learn from scratch entirely using that site, but it's much easier to have a speaker walk you through (preferably in person). One of the things I learned from making the wiki is that there are significant numbers of people even at Mathcamp who are interested in the language but have not had a chance to learn -- so talk to a speaker, or someone who can refer you to one.

Brit: Thank you, Alan! To the interested reader: You can contact me via email if you want me to pass on your contact info to a speaker. No anonymous requests will be considered.

Lee Walters on Counterfactuals and Context

(Partial cross-posting from the comment section of a post over at Matters of Substance)

Lee Walters has an interesting paper responding to a paper I co-wrote with Joe Salerno on counterfactuals and context last year. One of Lee's objections is that "once the role of context for Lewis is properly understood, strengthening and the rest [of the argument forms normally claimed to be invalid for counterfactuals] are invalid as Lewis himself claimed". This is exactly what we argue is not the case. Once the role of context is properly understood, this is not the result we get. Consider:

(1) If the speed of light hadn't been constant, then the physics books would not have been mistaken.

(1) has two readings. On the false reading, the physics books would have been the way they actually are. So, the closest worlds are worlds where the speed of light is not constant but where the physics books are just the way they actually are, and hence wrong. On the other reading, even if the speed of light hadn't been constant, the physicists would have been as intelligent as they actually are. So they wouldn't have had the evidence they actually have, and they wouldn't have written the books they actually wrote. So, (1) is true.

The problem, of course, is that a similarity metric that just prioritizes facts about the intelligence of physicists is compatible with the closest worlds being ones where the speed of light isn't constant but where everything else is as close as possible to the way it actually is. So physicists have the same intelligence and the same evidence as they actually do, the books are the way they actually are, and so on. To get the true reading of (1), the similarity metric must specify a large number of facts, including facts about the production of physics books.

But now consider (2) below. To evaluate it non-vacuously, we must bracket a number of these prioritized facts.

(2) If the speed of light hadn't been constant but the world had been just the way it actually is in nearly all other respects, then the physics books would not have been mistaken.

Since we have to bracket prioritized facts in order to evaluate (2) non-vacuously, we are in some sense changing the context when we evaluate it. A context in a Stalnakerian sense is most naturally defined partially in terms of the set of facts that the conversationalists hold fixed. One can, of course, insist that this is the wrong notion of context. But the dispute then is a dispute about what the correct notion of a context is. Why isn't moving in the space of ordered worlds and hence bracketing prioritized background facts just a way of changing the context? After all, to evaluate (2) non-vacuously we have to suppose (for the sake of evaluation) that these prioritized facts do not obtain. That is just a way of changing the context, given our preferred notion of context. But now, when we keep the context fixed, then strengthening etc turn out valid.

Lee claims that "Brogaard and Salerno’s mistake then, is to move from the fact that “the set of contextually determined background facts must remain fixed” (42) to the thought that on Lewis’s semantics these facts must hold at all the worlds relevant to assessing counterfactuals within that context."

However, this is not a mistake. Bracketing prioritized facts for the sake of evaluating a counterfactual non-vacuously just is a way of changing the context. Moving in the space of ordered worlds amounts to bracketing prioritized facts and hence amounts to changing the context, given our preferred notion of context. Note that we are not suggesting that there can't be an overall similarity metric. We are simply suggesting that when we move in the space of ordered worlds, the context may shift. So, our approach is not simply a strict conditionals approach.

Later in the paper Lee claims: "We could, however, consider Brogaard and Salerno not as drawing out a consequence of holding context fixed within Lewis’s semantics, but rather as rejecting Stalnaker-Lewis semantics."

This is a charitable (and somewhat correct) reading of our paper, at least if he takes us to be rejecting the idea that one can bracket prioritized facts in order to evaluate counterfactuals non-vacuously without changing the context at least temporarily.

Lee also says:

"the conclusion of (Wet Match) concerns what would have been the case, if, contrary to fact, the match had been soaked overnight. To hold fixed the fact
that it has not been soaked overnight, is to miss what it is that we are concerned with."

Not true. We allow for context-shifts in our semantics. So, we don't miss "what it is we are concerned with". The conclusion obviously triggers a shift of context.

Lee further claims:

"the following argument is valid for Brogaard and Salerno since one of the background
facts held fixed when considering the premiss, is that the coin landed heads.

If you had bet heads you would have won
Therefore, if the coin had come up tails, it would have come up heads and
you would have won

We do not reason like this and have no interest in counterfactuals assessed in this way."

Exactly. We do not reason in this way. But what this shows is that we don't keep the background fact that the coin landed heads fixed when we evaluate the conclusion. Of course, we don't. We allow context to shift. Lee's case is not a counterexample to our proposal.

Lee also holds that we mis-evaluate the following counterexample to MP:

If a Republican were to win, then if Reagan were not to win, Anderson would win.
A Republican will win.
So, if Reagan were not to win, Anderson would win.

He thinks that we mistakenly have Lewis assign the truth-value true to the first premise. But this is not a mistake. At the closest worlds at which a Republican wins and Reagan does not win, Anderson wins. So (1) is true. Of course, Lee might insist that we have to evaluate the first premise differently. He might insist that we have to go to the closest world where a Republican wins (the actual) and then to a world where Reagan doesn't win. Carter wins there (as he was second in polls though not republican). But that would defeat the purpose of a contextual semantics that is claimed to capture intuitive truth-values. Our semantics has the advantage over the standard one that it does not entail a rejection of MP.

In conclusion Lee says: "we have no interest in counterfactuals assessed a la Brogaard and Salerno".

As we explain in the paper and in an earlier comment over at Matters of Substance, epistemic contextualists seem to assume it. Moreover, a Stalnakerian notion of a context seems to push us in this direction, as I explained earlier in this post.

Weatherson on Influence

At the AOC conference Brian Weatherson gave a paper on causation defending a disjunctive account. The paper begins by considering various causative statements, e.g. 'John opened the window'. It then argues that the obtaining of the special causal relation that obtains when a causative statement is true is sufficient (but not necessary) for causation.

The other disjunct (or sufficient condition) is influence. Influence differs from causal dependence. An event E causally depends on a prior event C iff if C hadn't occurred, then E wouldn't have occurred. Causal dependence is sometimes taken to be a necessary constraint on influence. However, for C to influence E, it must also be the case that if C had occurred at a different time, then E would have occurred at a different time, and if C had occurred differently, then E would have occurred differently. Weatherson argues that causal dependence is not a necessary constraint on influence.

However, I think this latter assumption is problematic. Here is a potential counterexample. Suppose there is an evacuation "test" event during which a number of American residents are evacuated out of America (Brian is one of them), and suppose Brian moves to Rutgers right after the evacuation event (a bit later than he otherwise would have).

The evacuation event is not the cause of Brian moving to Rutgers. Yet if the evacuation event had occurred at a different time, then we can imagine that Brian's move would have occurred at a different time as well (we can set up the case that way). Moreover, if the evacuation event had occurred differently (suppose e.g. that Brian was not one of the chosen ones), then his move to Rutgers might have occurred differently as well (e.g., it wouldn't involve a trip from overseas).

The right kind of response to this example, I think, is to take causal dependence to be a necessary constraint on influence. Brian would still have moved to Rutgers even if the evacuation event hadn't occurred.

Of course, if we *do* take causal dependence to be a necessary constraint on influence, then we need to find a way to avoid counting the following sort of causal claim as true:

(1) 2 + 2 = 4 and the evacuation event (as described above) are the joint cause of Brian's move to Rutgers.

On the standard Lewisian account of counterpossibles, 'if 2 + 2 weren't 4, then Brian wouldn't have moved to Rutgers' is vacuously true. So, if causal dependence is a necessary constraint on influence, and influence is sufficient for causation (Brian agrees to the latter), then (1) is true. So we want to rule out that counterpossibles are vacuously true across the board (but, as Joe and I argued at the conference, there are ways to do that).

Pics from AOC

Our pictures from the Arizona Ontology Conference are now up. Joe has further details on some of the talks. More details later.

Live from AOC

This is me on my horse Viking. Carrie took the picture. For some live blogging, check out Joe's post over at Knowability.

Sydney Ontological Commitment Conference

Just returned from a fun conference in Sydney on ontological commitment, which was organized by Luca Moretti. There were many excellent talks. Uriah Kriegel opened the conference by drawing a distinction between the two questions central to the conference: the first-order question: what should we be ontologically committed to? And the second-order question: what is it to be ontologically committed to something? Uriah's talk addressed the first-order question. It dealt with the issue of whether there are merely intentional objects, that is, entities that serve as the objects of mental states in the absence of a real object. And, as you might have expected, Uriah's response was a loud and clear 'no'. Uriah is a defender of (phenomenal) adverbialism. According to this position, if one is thinking of a unicorn, one is thinking unicornly. Uriah dealt with a number of new and old objections to this sort of position. One famous objection comes from Frank Jackson, and it runs as follows: suppose you perceive a red cube and a blue circle. In Adverbialese, we can then say, for example, that you perceive redly cubely bluly circly. But how then are we to distinguish the envisaged scenario from the scenario in which you perceive a red circle and a blue cube. You would still perceive redly cubely bluly circly. It may be replied that perhaps we can say that you perceive red-cubely and blue-circly rather than red-circly and blue-cubely. But the standard reply to this move is that one then cannot account for inferences of the following kind:

You perceive red-cubely and blue-circly
So, you perceive a cube.

The conclusion, it is alleged, doesn't follow for much same reason that we cannot infer that Alice ran quickly from 'Alice ran close-to-quickly'. Uriah offered his opponent the following sort of reply. Consider:

There is a strawberry
There is a straw and there is a berry
Therefore, there is a berry.

The inference is obviously fallacious. But just because the move from premise 1 to premise 2 is mistaken, this does not mean that all inferences from the first premise to the conclusion is fallacious. The reason the inference from the premise to the conclusion holds (without the second premise) is that all strawberries are berries. Likewise, Uriah said, the reason the inference from 'you preceive red-cubely and blue-circly' to 'you perceive a cube' is valid is that all red-cubely perceptions are perceptions of a cube. My own objection to Uriah's general adverbialist position was that it seems that it cannot account for wide aspects of meaning. Consider:

Twin Oscar is thinking of water

If interpreted against the background of Putnam's Twin Earth story the sentence sounds false. However, in Uriah's framework the sentence is to be rendered as 'Twin Oscar is thinking-waterly'. This, of course, is true. Uriah responded by denying the possibility of de re attitudes in general.

Jonathan Schaffer followed Uriah with a talk about truth-maker commitments (as shown on the pretty slide in the picture). Schaffer's position was somewhat anti-Quinean. He first argued that the important question is not what exists. This is not important because Quine was right when he said that everything exists. If you take a look at a true fragment of the language, you can simply read off the ontological commitments directly. This is quite uninteresting, however, as it does not tell us which entities are fundamental. The important question, according to Schaffer, is that of which entities are fundamental. Schaffer argued that we can, in principle, allow any kind of entity whatsoever to be deposited into our ontology: properties, propositions, numbers, etc. etc. But few of these will be fundamental. One virtue of this framework is that if we endorse it, then we do not need to engage in Quinean paraphrasing. 'There are numbers', for example, commits us to numbers at the Quinean level but it does not automatically commit us to numbers at the level of fundamentals. So, there is a sense in which it is innocent to say that there are numbers. It would be much less innocent to claim that numbers are among the fundamental entities of the universe.

There were many many other fantastic talks. Luca, who also organized the conference, argued that something like Horwich's minimalism about truth should be extended to properties, facts, and so on. Amie Thomassson argued, among other things, that we ought to reject substantive criteria for entities to 'really' exist and Quine's criterion of ontological commitment, as the latter provides only a sufficient, not necessary, condition for ontological commitment. My own talk was primarily concerned with the question of whether we can make sense of extensional and intensional criteria of ontological commitment. Michaelis Michael argued that ontological commitments are a species of commitments in general and that implicit commitments play an important role in assessing each other and our theories. Kristie Miller delivered a very interesting talk on the metaphysics of holes. Finally, Mark Colyvan argued that inconsistent theories pose a problem for the Quinean conception of ontological commitment. If accepting the best theories currently available requires us to believe they are true, then we are required to believe in impossible ojects. For most theories are inconsistent. Mark suggested that we should give up classical logic but that we shouldn't give up the hope that our best theories can be revised to avoid consistency. I argued that we need not give up classical logic, as long as we take rational belief to be closed under paraconsistent consequence rather than classical consequence. Either way Mark's conclusion that we are committed to inconsistent objects is rather surprising (to say the least).

All in all a very intense and intellectually rich conference. Thanks to Luca Moretti for organizing it and to Susanna Schellenberg for sending the photos.

The Reasoner 1(3)

The Reasoner - issue 1(3) is now available. Joe and I wrote a short note for this month's issue, which discusses Timothy Williamson's line against non-trivial counterpossibles and replies to Alan Baker.

The Reasoner 1 (2)

Alan Baker has published a reply to our note on counterpossibles in the latest issue of the Reasoner. Naturally, we are now working on a reply to his reply.

Trip to Europe

I am off to Europe. My paper for Aberdeen is available here. After Aberdeen Joe and I are presenting something on subjunctives, impossible worlds and two-dimensionalism in Edinburgh (we will also give our new account of essences). After Edingburgh I am off to England. Then back to Scotland to St. Andrews. I will be taking a sidetrip to Copenhagen as well. See you in a month.

Sea Battle Semantics: New Draft

My Sea Battle Semantics paper is now nearly finished. I have replied to the main objections raised at the Pacific and hope to be able to send the final version of the paper to the nice editors at the Philosophical Quarterly (who were kind enough to give me an extension) shortly. If any of you has any further concerns, please don't hesitate to email me.

Impossible Thoughts

As some of you already know, Joe Salerno and I are writing a monograph on impossible thoughts. A book page has now been created. It is available here.

UPDATE: abstracts for most of the chapters are now up.

Modes of Existence

I now have a draft of my review of Modes of Existence, which I am reviewing for Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews. The first 12 pages are mostly summaries of the essays (Mulligan, Raspa, Kroon, van Inwagen, Varzi, Reicher, Barbero, Orillo, Spolaore). The last 6 pages are friendly criticisms of Achille Varzi, Giuseppe Spolaore, and others. The very last part is an (overly sketchy) extension of David Chalmers' 2Dism to fictional and perceptual reports. Comments welcome!

On Adam's Counterexample to Modus Tollens

Ernest W. Adams famously offered the following counterexample to modus tollens:

If it rained, it didn't rain hard.
It rained hard.
So, it didn't rain.

Obviously, this is not a counterexample, given a logic 101 reading of the indicative conditional. Rather, it is a counterexample, given an intuitive assignment of truth-values to the premises and the conclusion. On an intuitive assignment, it seems that 'if it rained, it didn't rain hard' and 'it rained hard' may both be true. But the conclusion seems false, given the premises.

Notice that we get the same result with a subjunctive instead of an indicative:

Should it rain, it won't rain hard.
It is raining hard.
So, it is not raining.

The subjunctive in the first premise is a so-called future subjunctive, which differs pragmatically from the past and pluperfect subjunctives, for example the past and pluperfect subjunctives introduce a counterfactual implicature). With a future subjunctive, the argument seems invalid. But the appearance is an illusion. If it is raining hard in reality, it is not true that it doesn't rain hard at the closest worlds at which it rains. For the closest worlds at which it rains will include the actual world. So, if the second premise is true, then the first premise is false. Now, on a possible world account of the indicative conditional, Adams' argument fails for the very same reasons. I take that to be a virtue of a possible worlds analysis of indicative conditionals. But obviously more needs to be said about how to avoid certain problems that arise on a possible worlds analysis of the indicative.

Here is one such problem: if subjunctives and indicatives have the same truth-conditions, why is 'if Oswald didn't kill Kennedy, someone else did' acceptable when 'if Oswald hadn't killed Kennedy, someone else would have' is not? Edgington suggested that the difference turns on a difference in the tenses. I think that story is plausible.

Another problem is to account for the difference between pairs of conditionals such as 'If Kerry had won the election, the actual U.S. president would have been a democrat', which seems false, and 'if Kerry won the election, the actual U.S. president is a democrat', which seems true. Solutions have been suggested by e.g. David Chalmers, Brian Weatherson and Daniel Nolan. Weatherson and Nolan suggest that the evaluation world (the "A-world") may fix the reference of the expressions in indicative conditionals. That's an interesting idea but it does seem to have some odd implications. For example, 'If language didn't exist 80,000 years ago, then language existed 80,000 years ago' comes out true. Chalmers' two-dimensional account seems to fare better, as it avoids this consequence. On his account, language doesn't have to exist at the scenarios used to evaluate indicative conditionals.

Reference:
Adams, E. W. "Modus Tollens Revisited", Analysis 48 (1988) 122-128.

Resistant Counterpossibles

A quick follow-up on Joe's kangaroo post (I couldn't resist). In his forthcoming book The Philosophy of Philosophy Timothy Williamson defends the view that all counterpossibles are true, including:

If Hillary Clinton had been my mother, she wouldn't have been my mother.

and

If the law of excluded middle had failed, 'p or not-p' would have been true.

Williamson then writes as follows (symbols have been translated into English):

If all counterpossible were false, 'possibly-A' would be equivalent to 'if A had been the case, A would have been the case', for the latter would still be true whenever A was possible; correspondingly, 'necessarily-A' would be equivalent to the dual 'not-(if not-A had been the case, then not-A would have been the case)' and one could carry out the programme of section 3 using the new equivalences.

As this is a counterpossible (if Williamson is right), what Williamson just said is true. But so is:

If all counterpossible were false, 'possibly-A' would NOT be equivalent to 'if A had been the case, A would have been the case', for the latter would still be FALSE whenever A was possible; correspondingly, 'necessarily-A' would NOT be equivalent to the dual 'not-(if not-A had been the case, then not-A would have been the case)' and [so] one could NOT carry out the programme of section 3 using the new equivalences.

I am not saying that counterpossibles are sometimes false. My only point is that the subjunctive mood is a common way in which to refute one's opponents in philosophy (perhaps the most common way), and so, if counterpossibles are true (per definition), philosophy isn't as deep and interesting as one would have thought.

On McGee's Counterexample to Modus Ponens

McGee's counterexample to modus ponens came up in our reading group today at WashU during our discussion of Chapter 4 of Timothy Williamson's forthcoming book The Philosophy of Philosophy. The counterexample runs as follows. It's just before the election in 1980. The polls suggest that Republican Reagan is a clear winner. Democrat Carter is second, and Republican Anderson is third. Someone reasons as follows:

(1) If a Republican wins, then if it's not Reagan who wins, it will be Anderson
(2) A Republican will win
(3) Therefore, if it's not Reagan who wins, it will be Anderson.

Impeccable reasoning. Or maybe not. Intuitively, (1) and (2) are true, while (3) is false. Of course, if we force a logic 101 reading, then the reasoning is impeccable.

The counterexample is not a counterexample to modus ponens, given a reading of 'if ... then ...' as a material conditional. It is a counterexample to modus ponens, given an intuitive assignment of truth-values. Moreover, if we take the intuitive assignment of truth-values seriously, then it is a counterexample to the logic 101 reading.

But if 'if ... then ...' is not to be read as the material conditional, how is it to be read? A possible worlds account (ala the one for subjunctive conditionals) does not seem give us the intuitive result either. Without any further constraints on the closeness relation, a possible worlds analysis of (1) would tell us to go to the closest world in which a Republican wins. That is the actual world (as Reagan won). Then we go to the closest world in which it's not Reagan who wins. The closest world in which he doesn't win is one in which Anderson wins, if we keep the "Republican wins" feature fixed. So, (1) is true. (2), of course, is true. And so is (3) if we keep the "Republican wins" feature fixed. But this is not the intuitive result.

Why do we get a different result on an intuitive reading? Well, because there are two ways of determining closeness. If we keep the "Republican wins" feature fixed, we get one ordering of the worlds, and if we keep the "most likely to win if Reagan doesn't" feature fixed, we get another ordering of the worlds. If we keep the "Republican wins" feature fixed, Anderson wins if Reagan loses. If we keep the "most likely to win if Reagan doesn't" feature fixed, Carter wins if Reagan loses. The "most likely to win" feature would normally be more important, as it would normally be more salient. In the case of (3), for example, we keep the "most likely to win if Reagan doesn't" feature fixed, hence the false reading. In the case of (1) the "Republican wins" feature was just mentioned in the antecedent. That makes it more salient. So when we evaluate the embedded conditional, we keep it fixed, hence the true reading.

Now, there are of course numerous reasons to be suspicious of a possible worlds analysis of indicative conditionals. But at least the possible worlds analysis fares better than the logic 101 analysis in this particular case, as it is able to explain why modus ponens seems to fail.

'The President has been Assassinated 5 Times'

Some think worm theory is suspect because we rarely quantify over worms in ordinary language. However, consider the following sentences (from Carlson 1977):

(1) The president makes good decisions when he is from Ohio
(2) The president has eaten at the Statler Hilton on saturday nights every week for the past 25 years.
(3) The president inhabited the White House continuously for 136 years until Truman moved into Blair house.
(4) The president has been assassinated by a disgruntled job-seeker five times since the turn of the century.

(3) seems to assert that a four-dimensional spacetime worm to which the predicate 'president' applies lived in the White House for 136 years until one of its temporal parts moved into Blair house, and (4) seems to assert that a four-dimensional spacetime worm to which the predicate 'president' applies has been killed five times. Carlson himself treats bare plurals and definite descriptions used generically as terms referring to kinds. But (1) of course does not assert of a kind that it makes good decisions when it is from Ohio. To avoid this implication Carlson distinguishes between kind-level and characterizing predicates. Kind-level predicates are predicates such as 'is extinct' which apply to the kind itself (as in 'the dinosaur is extinct'). Characterizing predicates are predicates such as 'makes good decisions when he is from Ohio' which apply only to instances of the kind. It is not the kind that makes good decisions when it is from Ohio but the individuals that fall under it. Carlson treats kinds as basic but if kinds were mereological sums, as some philosophers think, his suggestion would be consistent with the thesis that ordinary language quantifies over worms.

Reference: Carlson, G. 1977. Reference to Kinds in English, Ph.D. thesis, UMass.

Comments on Graff Fara's Paper

I have uploaded a rough draft of my comments on Graff Fara's super-interesting paper for the Arizona Ontology Conference to my website. In the comments I briefly outline an epistemic solution to the problem of contingent identity. But, as Chalmers has just pointed out to me, it is not obvious that sentences involving subjunctive conditionals such as 'Goliath is identical to Lumpl but if I broke off his finger he wouldn't be' can be handled in this way. The puzzle of contingent identity: (1) and (2) seem true.

(1) Goliath is identical to Lumpl.

(2) But Goliath might not have been identical to Lumpl.

But they can't be if identity is absolute, and names are rigid. I suggest that the modality in (2) is (deeply) epistemic.

UPDATE: Formula (4) didn't go through. It should be: (x)(y)(x = y --> <>(x is not identical to y) iff <>(y is not identical to y)).